None of my business, but I've always found it difficult to understand why people would want to change from one stereotypical construct to another.

Quite right, Freeman. It's none of your business.

A strong and level piece. Well done Juliet.

Fergus: Around 7500 transsexuals in the UK, but the figure for Transgender folk, which is a wider, umbrella term, will most likely be around ten times that or more as a very rough guesstimate.

Most transsexual people simply want to get on with their lives, unhindered, and certainly don't want to be a part of the media circus that often vilifies them. I'm thankful that there are such strong voices in the Trans community now, seeking to educate and advise that this is the case, seeking to dispel some of the myths and challenge the massive damage that the press has caused to lives that are already hard fought enough!

Freeman: I'd be happy to try and help you understand a little better???

If you mean those that either will get sex reassignment, or could benefit from it, a reasonable estimate is 1 in 3000 people. Call it 20,000 in the UK.

Of those, the NHS has treated ~1000, but we have no good numbers for those who have gone overseas.

The Australian Passport Office processes ~200 passport changes to gender per year. Such changes until recently required surgery. So we can estimate that ~500 have sex reassignment in a population of 21 million per year. A reasonable estimate is thus 1500/yr for the UK, most of which are outside the NHS so not captured by official figures.

With the increased quality of care by the NHS, the numbers are growing though, showing a greater proportion are now actually getting the treatment they were theoretically entitled to, but actually denied.

Unfortunately, the leaders of the transgender community betrayed the rest of the LBGT community by agreeing to support allowing on thransgenders that identify as heterosexual for being given right to gert married. Under laws agreed with the then Labour govt, even transgender people that accepted they were gay and already legally married were forced to get divorced. Right now, two biological males can only get married if one of them changes gender.
Furthermore, throughout the muslim world and other parts of the developing world, transgender people are gaining legal rights but gay people are suffering inplisonment and execution; persecution that has shown to be supported by the transgender community.

'How many transgender people are there in Britain? A round figre will do.'

In Thailand which has a similar population figure to Britain there are an estimated one million transpeople. The worldwide number is roughly an equal figure to the population of France.

Historybuff, how is that betrayal? Gender and sexuality are different. I could write a whole argument countering that on how LGB groups dismiss transgender issues whilst claiming to support them. The fact is ithat n terms of gender a relationship between man and woman is heterosexual so legal in terms of marriage. I support gay marriage as a straight woman but see no reason to block straight marriages based on biology. Are you one of these people who will tell a TS woman she will never be female, despite the fact that she has been one in terms of her mind her entire life? We know nature screws up and that marriage is based on legal gender, not chromosomes. What gives you the right to class TS women as men or TS men as women? I understand the frustration but you can't make new prejudiced laws up just because gay marriage is not legal yet. I don't know a single TS person (gay, straight or bi) opposed to gay marriage, we support it. To hear you complain about straight marriage involving a TS person is quite simply disgusting.

This article is otherwise spot on, but I need to correct the statement that Meta is "an online magazine catering to female-to-male and male-to-female people". This implies that META only covers FtM and MtF trans people.

Paris Lees' editorial in the first issue explains META is "covering all types of genderqueer, genderless, transsexual, gender variant and gender non-conforming people, and also those with a trans history, loved-ones, family, friends and allies."

Good article Juliet, let's hope your optimism is justified.

Can't believe Historybuff! More unsubstantiated assertions. Where's the evidence to support your contentions. As the late Christopher Hitchens said;
"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

Yes, there is evidence that transgender surgeries and theories are used as a solution to homosexuality and those communities support persecution of gay people; I encourage all of you to see Be Like Others, an expose of how gay men are given the option of being executed or undergoing sex change surgery and joining the transgender community. Are things really different in USA and Europe? Let's see.

Rachel, What makes you so certain that sexual orientation and gender are two different things? Is this assuption based on something you read on the internet, Wikipedia perhaps? If you look at the Wiki articles on transgender/ts you will see that they lacking any scientific basis and property notations by scholarly researchers. Isn't it much more likely that, baring in mind every human being is an individual with unique characteristics and combinations physiologically and pschologically that sexual orientation and gender identity are part of the same continuum? Certainly this was the overwhelming belief until about 15 years ago. It is only very recently that children under the age of consent have been put on hormone treatments. Now, little boys are being put on hormone treatments by these quacks for now more reason than that enjoy playing with dolls rather than train sets and look androgenous, and their parents are terrified of having a gay child. Clearly those particular doctors that dole out these hormone treatments and perform surgeries have a financial interest in creating this notion that there is a clear difference.